


did you see them

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Barricade Day 2019, Barricade aftermath, Canon Era, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 15:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19112878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: "Outside, the sun is shining brightly. Her son is dead. What more is there to say?" // or // the families of each of Les Amis deal with their deaths in the 1832 June Rebellion.





	did you see them

**Author's Note:**

> *hides* *happy barricade day folks*
> 
> Warnings: uncomfortable family situations? And Enjolras' mother isn't particularly nice so expresses some (probably period-appropriate) opinions which I don't believe to be outright offensive (please correct me if so!) but fit her character.

_"did you see them going off to fight? children of the barricade who didn't last the night. did you see them lying where they died? someone used to cradle them and kiss them when they cried. did you see them lying side by side?"_

**I. Combeferre**

[1832]

The moment they see the papers, they turn to look at each other. “We’re going,” Paulette says, clasping her hands together to stop them from shaking. She didn’t even need to. Jean is already moving.

“I’ll get Tomas and Beatrice to run the shop whilst we’re gone,” he says, taking up his hat and coat.

“I’ll pack,” Paulette calls after his back. He shuts the door quietly behind him. She takes a deep breath, then another, squeezes her nails into her palms and sends up a prayer to God. Please, she thinks, desperate. Please let Yves be alright. God _please._

*

The streets are full of soldiers, still, and as they walk they are silent, clinging to each other. There are strange brown stains on the paving stones of the Quai St-Michel, blood, Paulette realises in horror. She looks away. Jean stops a passing soldier to ask where the fighting was, where the bodies are. “Probably the morgue,” he says, callously. There are deep circles under his eyes. “Idiotic students, never understand what they’re trying to overthrow. Just causing more trouble than they’re worth.”

Jean takes a deep breath at her side, and Paulette grabs his arm before he can say something he’ll regret. “My _son_ was going to be a doctor,” she says quietly, meeting the soldier’s gaze. He looks discomfited by a woman, especially a black woman, having an opinion that runs contrary to his own, glances to Jean as if Jean has ever or will ever shut her up. Jean just stares back, mouth working. Jean would have said a lot worse.

Politeness demands a response. “I hope you find him,” he mutters, and goes on his way. Jean squeezes her arm.

“I couldn’t just…I couldn’t…” Paulette starts.

“I know.”

They keep walking. Another passing citizen informs them that the worst of the fighting was at Saint-Merry, and she remembers Yves writing to her about this ghastly drinking-house there one of his friends found. They find a bloodstained, half-destroyed cafe called the Corinth, the remains of a barricade and a torn-up red flag. No bodies. No son. Paulette takes a step backwards, fighting tears and her heel crunches on something. She turns to look, sees the glint of glass and picks up a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, spectacles that look awfully like…

Jean’s hands close around hers. “The morgue,” he says, fierce. “He’s not dead until we’ve seen his body.”

They walk back to the Ile de la Cite, queue with the others gathered around the entrance to the morgue. Paulette can tell the difference between those who are there for the spectacle and those who are looking for loved ones who must have been fighting. They are silent, the others are boisterous, making tasteless jokes and laughing too loudly. Another woman is waiting next to them in line, her grey dress pale against her brown skin. She looks like she’s spent most of the day crying and she’s all on her own. Paulette’s heart aches for her.

Jean goes to see what can be done about the speed of the queue, so Paulette finds herself turning. “Are you alright?” she asks, and the woman starts, looks at her with big eyes, fiddles with a chain hanging around her neck. “We’re looking for someone too,” she carries on. “My husband has gone to see whether they will let us in before all the voyeurs.”

“How did you know that I’m looking for someone?” the woman asks.

“My darling, it’s all over your face. Was he your lover? Father?”

“Lover,” she sniffs. “You?”

“Our son, and his best friend too, I suppose. It’s not as if Rene Enjolras’ family are going to give much of a damn if he never comes home.”

It feels rather good to be badmouthing the Enjolras-Guillory clan in public. She’d never dare do anything like it back in Marseille, not with all the power they have, not with how _bloody grateful_ people are for their patronage, their money, but from what Rene used to say, well. Paulette’s never met Madame Alexandrine Enjolras, but if she did, there would be words said. Madame Enjolras must be utterly stupid to have given up a relationship with a son as brilliant as Rene. The woman has stiffened. “Rene Enjolras?”

“You know him?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. I was…my lover was a good friend of his, oh, I…well. I guess your son must be M. Combeferre, right?”

Paulette notes that she is using the past tense, feels her stomach clench and forces herself to remain calm, to not break down there on the spot. The woman’s been here. She probably knows. “Yes, it’s rather obvious isn’t it?” she says, as lightly as she can. “Do you mind me asking, who you’re looking for? It’s just Yves writes such wonderful letters about his friends, I feel like I know them all.”

“Joly. And Bossuet. I was good friends with Bossuet.”

“Bossuet is the clumsy one?”

The woman’s smile is stretched, looks as though it is about to shatter. “Always breaking things. Yes. I’m just…this is so strange, to have met you here of all days, I’m sorry, I’m so overwraught, I can’t…my name’s Musichetta, by the way. Musichetta Chaudhuri.”

“Paulette Combeferre. I would say it is a pleasure, but in these circumstances…”

She lets the end of her sentence trail off. Jean reappears and informs them that they can come in, ahead of everyone, so Paulette takes Musichetta’s work-roughened hand and pulls her along with them. The morgue is chilly, smelly, bustling, and they move quickly through it, looking over at the bodies laid out, most of them covered in bullet wounds and sabre slashes, their eyes closed. Musichetta stops abruptly in front of one of them, and Paulette pulls Jean to a halt too, and that’s when she sees them, all of them, a row of young men ending in Rene Enjolras, still in the red jacket Paulette had chosen the fabric for years ago. Beyond that, Yves is lying silent and still, his curly hair sticky with blood and his brown skin sallow. She’d known, deep down. She knows she’d known. Her legs lock, there’s a burning in her throat, and then Jean has his arms around her and they’re both sagging to the floor, the sobs tearing out of her. She clings to Jean’s shoulders, her fingers digging in, hides her face from the fact that  her boy, her miracle child, her _baby_ is lying dead and cold in a morgue and…and…and…

Eventually, Jean gathers himself together, helps her up off the floor. “We need to go and get his possessions,” he says, gently.

“What about burial? I want him to have a Christian burial, I…”

“We can sort that out later,” Jean says, gently. “We will sort it out, darling. I’ll talk to the morgue staff. Shall we ask them to take Rene for us, as well?”

Paulette rubs her hand across her eyes. The thoughts are like treacle, slow, sticky, disinterested. She can feel her heartbeat in her ears. “Yes. Yes, you had better. God knows his mother isn’t going to do it.”

Musichetta comes over to them, then, her face set as though the slightest nudge will start her crying again. “You can stay with me,” she says, sudden. “Unless you’ve already taken a room at a hotel. I have the space, I…” her lip trembles, she takes a deep breath and rallies, “I shared with Joly and Bossuet, on the Rue St-Severin. You’re more than welcome to stay as long as you need.”

“Oh, I…thank you,” Paulette says, after a moment, her voice hoarse. “Thank you. That’s kind.”

“Go with Mademoiselle Chaudhuri, darling. I’ll find you later.” Jean clasps her shoulder, his face set. Paulette’s about to protest, but he interrupts her: “Go. Get out of this horrible place.”

She goes, takes Musichetta’s arm gently. Outside, the sun is shining brightly. Her son is dead. What more is there to say?

 

**II. Courfeyrac**

[1845]

“What’s this one, Maman?” Ghyslaine asks, tugging on her mother’s arm and looking at the painting in the family gallery. “I’ve never seen it before.”

 It’s of a cafe scene, painted in warm colours, a group of ten men laughing and drinking. The two in the foreground are arguing about something - one, who brandishes a wad of paper with a fierce beam on his face, is familiar. Ghyslaine should know. She sees that nose in the mirror every morning.

“Your uncle, and his friends,” her mother replies, staring at it. Her hand takes Ghyslaine’s. There is a scrawled “R” in the bottom of the canvas. The flatness of the oil paint catches the sunlight, sends it in a diagonal slash across the scene.

“Uncle Ghislain?”

“Who else, darling?”

“I _do_ have other uncles.”

“Yes, that has not escaped my notice.” Ghyslaine’s mother sighs again, pulls Ghyslaine over to the padded bench set against the opposite wall. Her other uncles are a source of constant vexation for her mother, and it’s rather entertaining, when it’s just the two of them, when Maman lets loose and rants in a way that is incredibly unladylike. It’s a sure thing that none of Maman’s society friends know just how political and just how vicious she can be. Ghyslaine sits down, tries to arrange her long, gangly limbs in a way her grandmother will deem elegant - such are the trials of life. When you’re too tall and skinny and dislocate your shoulder at your first dance lesson, your grandmother and great-aunts will _always_ have problems with the way you comport yourself. It’s a quick lesson in the merits of learning how to be invisible.

“I didn’t know about this painting,” Ghyslaine says. “Grandmere always said Uncle Ghislain never bothered to sit for a portrait.”

“He didn’t. This isn’t. It’s a sketch by one of his friends, we think. I found it amongst his things recently, commissioned an artist to paint it. It arrived whilst we were down in the Loire. What do you think?”

Ghyslaine hums, tilts her head to one side. Her uncle looks so happy, to be debating with a brown-skinned man who looks a lot more patient than her uncle does, to be in that shabby looking room with the mismatched tables and chairs crammed awkwardly together. Beside them, a beautiful blonde man is sitting and listening quietly, a book open on his lap and his expression inscrutable. In the background, other figures play billiards, and laugh. A bald man is tripping over his own feet. In a way, she likes the fact that something nice has come out of this year’s June melancholy.

“It’s more alive than the other paintings,” Ghyslaine decides, and her mother turns to her with a smile. “I like it. And I like that he’s with his friends. Uncle Ghislain _should_ be remembered like this.”

“Yes,” her mother says. “Yes, he should.”

**III. Jehan**

[1832. And after]

_To my dear sister,_

_If you are reading this, I_ _’ve died. It feels very blunt writing it like that, but I find that poetic fancy has quite deserted me. I am staring death in the face. Tomorrow, we attend General Lamarque’s funeral, and if Enjolras is right, there will be an insurrection. I have utter faith in his powers of foresight, and when combined with Bahorel’s nose for bloodshed, there is rarely a time when we are mistaken._

 _I know. I know. Me, who you taught to braid hair and instilled a love of flowers and poetry and art in. Me, fighting at a barricade. It feels surreal, doesn_ _’t it, like one of those Romantic plotlines that we love, that often defies belief but you let yourself go along with it and, well, you always insisted I should get better at standing up for myself, but it’s like a muse, it only really happens when I get filled with passion, which often doesn’t happen at the most convenient of times. Luckily I have the best of friends to defend me when I cannot._

 _God, Eugenie, I_ _’m scared. I’m so scared. I haven’t admitted that to anyone yet. They all are, I know. Even Enjolras is scared though you’d never realise it from looking at him._ _~~I only know because I walked in on~~ _ _~~…~~ _

_It_ _’ll be alright. We were nearly all there during the July Days, and look how well that turned out. Perhaps, when we win, I shall get around to publishing those poems I sent you with my last letter. They’re almost nearly perfect._

 _I should sleep, I should_ _…sorry, someone’s knocking at the door…_

Her brother’s posthumous collection of poems are met with critical acclaim. Eugenie accepts the praise, tells everyone he died of cholera in Paris, and sits in the garden watching her children, thinking about how they gunned him down in the street for no reason other than he stood up for something, just like she told him to his whole life.

God, her heart aches.

**IV. Feuilly**

[1833]

“When’s M. Feuilly coming back?” Emmanuelle’s brother asks her. It’s been seven months since the June Rebellion, as they’re calling it now, and Claude has been asking every single week, as regular as Notre-Dame bells. It used to be every day, ever since M. Feuilly went out with their father, a grim expression and a tricolour cockade pinned on his threadbare jacket. Claude’s only little, she reminds herself, every time she has to give the answer, brusque, in only the way a sister can:

“He’s not. Give it up.”

“Not” is apparently not in Claude’s vocabulary yet. Next week he asks again. Next week, Emmanuelle makes up her mind. The job market is a mess and no-one has any work for a man with a bad leg at the moment, so she sneaks out in the middle of the night, binds her chest and cuts her hair, thinking about the time she’d come in to find M. Feuilly sitting on his pallet with his shirt open, breasts bound tight with linen strips, tending a cut on his side. She’d seen it instantly then, the swell of his hips under the rough trousers, the telltale lack of a lump between his legs. He’d sworn her to secrecy, and she’d kept her word. Now, she thinks about him, the quiet revolutionary artist with such a passion for learning, wonders who he was before, wonders who she might become if she follows in his footsteps.

 

**V. Joly & Bossuet**

[1837]

“Noé,” Musichetta calls. “Come on!”

Her son drops the stick he’d been poking an earthworm with and runs towards her, giggling. She knows she should tell him to be respectful in a cemetery, but his good humour reminds her so much of Bossuet she can’t bear to. He crashes into her skirts and she presses the top of his head, gentle, running her fingers through his fine dark hair. She thinks perhaps Joly was his actual father, but she decided when Noé was born that she didn’t want to know. She can see both of them in his face, in his manner, and they would both have been fathers to him had they lived.

Rose slides a hand into the crook of Musichetta’s elbow. “You doing alright?” she asks, and Musichetta looks up into green eyes, and freckled, pale skin, and an awkwardly tied bonnet.

“Yes. I think so. It’s better this year.”

It is, she thinks, as they begin their walk to go and visit Noé’s fathers. She has Rose, now, to sleep in her bed and keep her warm, Rose whose father was hanged for publishing sedition in England, Rose who understands, Rose who loves her. And Noé is a happy, healthy child. Musichetta earns enough to keep them all fed, and a roof over their heads. Paulette and Jean Combeferre are travelling up to see them, will be here by this afternoon; Musichetta wonders where she should take them out to dinner. The years have been more difficult for the two of them, she thinks, but they’re holding on. Noé has been good for all of them - a living, breathing, laughing piece of Joly and Bossuet for her, an adopted grandson for the Combeferres, a second chance for Rose.

They stop in front of the small stone Joly’s family had paid for, and Musichetta hands Noé the flowers she bought at the market this morning. He tiptoes forward to put them gently on the grave, and then stands there, bobbing up and down on his toes like a bird at the water’s edge. He can’t read yet, but Musichetta knows he’s entranced by the carvings on the stone, the rod of Aesclepius engraved by Joly’s name.

“Hello Papa,” he says, suddenly, and Musichetta feels her throat constrict. Rose slides an arm around her waist. “Hello Bossuet too. Maman misses you a lot, but she’s happy now.”

It’s nearly verbatim what she’d told him last night when she’d tucked him in, reminding him of the date and thinking that this time five years ago she was inside the Corinth rolling bandages, the air stretched tight like the skin of a drum, watching the boys build outside and wait for the first attack. She swallows hard. “That’s good, darling. Thank you. I’m sure they know.”

Noé looks up, his dark eyes bright. “Can we go to the bakery now, Maman?”

“Always led by your stomach, Monsieur Noé,” Rose says, scooping him up and hanging him by his ankles. He shriek giggles, and Musichetta smiles through the stinging in her eyes. “We’ll let Maman have a few minutes to herself, shall we?” Then, to Musichetta, “We’ll be at Plamondon’s, alright?”

“Thank you,” Musichetta says, and Rose deposits Noé back on his feet, leads him away. Once they’ve disappeared amongst the graves, she kneels by the graves, adjusts the flowers, traces her finger over Joly’s name and knows Bossuet is buried right alongside him. She sighs. “I’m happy,” she tells them, again, “I am. And it’s easier to miss you now. I guess time does that. I don’t think about it, I’m too busy running around after Noé and the girls in the atelier and then I realise I haven’t thought about you in weeks.”

She swallows, painful. “But I suppose that’s what moving on is. And I’m glad of it. I am.”

The birds are singing in the trees, and a magpie hops closer, an inquisitive gleam in its beady eye. Musichetta sits back, tells them more about what’s been going on. Tells them about Noé, talks so she doesn’t have to remember sitting in the window of her apartment and waiting for the guns to stop, waiting for the moment they’d tell her that no-one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie survived, that her lovers were never coming back, that she was all alone. She talks until her mouth runs dry and then she presses her hand to the grave and gets up. “See you next year, boys,” she says, and walks away.

She doesn’t look back.

 **VII.** **Éponine**

[1842]

“Do you have any family you want to invite, Azelma?” Her fiance is sitting across the table from her and doing his level best to ignore their chaperone seated at her knitting in the corner. “You never talk about them, but I have to ask.”

Azelma shrugs. “All the ones I care about are dead. Your family are enough for me.”

His expression is about to crumple into one of awful sympathy, so she reaches out and takes his hand, meets his gaze steadily. “No need for that. It was years ago. I’m over it.”

(That night she lies in bed and wonders what Éponine would think of America, of Azelma marrying an upstanding young gentleman, of a life so far removed from their time in Paris that Gorbeau House feels like a particularly nasty nightmare. She thinks Éponine would have been happy for her.)

 

**VIII. Gavroche**

[1832]

When he doesn’t come back, the two little boys wait, shivering in the breeze and rain that comes seeping through the cracks in the elephant. What else can they do?

 

**VIII. Bahorel**

[1833]

Patrice finds his son sitting in one of the barns, a piece of straw in his mouth, staring moodily into space. “Come on, we’ve got thirty cows to milk,” he says. “Why the long face, Jean?”

“Pa,” Jean looks up at him. “Do you know what day it is?”

It dawns, ice trickling down the back of his neck. He takes a deep breath. “Yes. Guillaume’s birthday.”

“He would have been thirty.”

“I know.”

Jean goes back to staring into space. Then, “Do you miss him?”

A loaded question. Patrice had always complained about his good-for-nothing second son, too bright for the lycee in Rennes, too lazy - politically opposed, Guillaume had argued - to apply himself to law school. And now he’s dead, been dead over a year. What a strange thought.

“Yes,” Patrice says, coming over and sitting on the floor beside Jean. “Yes, I do. All of his stupid puns.”

“And his awful waistcoats. You could only get away with something like that in Paris.”

“Can you imagine…”

“Guillaume stuck back here?” Jean picks up another piece of straw. There’s fondness in his tone, fondness and an aching kind of grief too, the kind that never quite goes away. “He would have gone mad within a month. Always looking for a bloody adventure.”

They fall into quiet, and Patrice tips his head back against the wall. “The cows can wait for a few minutes,” he says.

**VIII. Grantaire**

[1832]

The cholera gets there before the news does. Not that it matters. No-one gave much of a fuck whilst he was alive, either.

**IX. Enjolras**

[1832]

The 12th of June dawns sunny. Mme. Alexandrine Enjolras is taking breakfast in bed and thinking about the ball last night, sipping her coffee and smiling at the thought of how well Victoire had comported herself. The ladies of Marseille had simply fallen over their feet to compliment her on her graceful, beautifully-mannered daughter. Victoire had been shining in her new blue gown, and, Alexandrine thinks with some smug pleasure, Antoinette had not done badly either. There will be a match, soon; so many of the young men were just as smitten as their mothers. Alexandrine allows herself the slight regret that it is not Paris, that Victoire will not catch the eye of a count or marquis; here it is mostly merchant’s sons. Money counts more than rank, a bitter pill she had to swallow in the aftermath of her brother’s death at the Battle of Jena, when her father ushered in the tall, broad-shouldered and greying M. Enjolras, the heir to and manager of his father’s lucrative trading company.

He had been sweet, eventually, she thinks, easy to wrap around her little finger with a flash of a smile in most circumstances, easy to be around. He’d renovated the estate here for her, so that she might continue to enjoy the kind of life she had grown accustomed to, even though she knew full well he would be perfectly happy living in a small townhouse down by the port. Now that he has been dead for nearly ten years, she is more disposed to think kindly about him, remember his queer attitude to life with a rueful smile than the indignant disbelief she choked down upon hearing it for the first time.

“Madame?” Eleonore, her lady’s maid, had just answered the door, now approaches the bed with a letter on a small silver plate. “This was just delivered.”

“Quite early for the post,” Alexandrine remarks.

“It wasn’t the post, Madame. It’s from Captain Favre. His brother was riding home, called in to deliver it.”

“Whatever could Captain Favre be writing to _me_ about?”

Eleonore is too well-trained to shrug, but her expression implies it. Alexandrine takes the letter and the proffered letter-opener. Captain Favre was a friend of her son René’s from childhood, one René had regrettably fallen out with after his father’s death. Perhaps if he had had more friends his own age and station then instead of just that wretched half-breed Combeferre boy and the malign influence of his rabble-rousing grandfather he would not be running around Paris trying to incite revolution. She has been hoping for years that with the end of his studies he would return to the estate, find a wife, and settle down to the kind of benevolent landownership her father wielded so well before the turmoil of the Revolution turned the world upside down. She is living for the day when he comes through the door and kneels at her feet, tells her that she was right all along, that agitating for social change and abolition of slavery and prison reform and all those pesky things is a useless waste of time when there are tenants to be protected and sisters to be married off and heirs to be born.

The letter paper is heavy in her hands, of good stock. She opens it, draws out the single sheet and reads it. Reads it again. And again.

“Madame?” Eleonore asks. Her voice feels like it is coming from very far away. “Madame are you quite alright?”

Alexandrine tries to say something, tries to make her mouth work, but it refuses. She’s transfixed by the letter, by the words in elegant black script. The _deepest condolences._ The _I shall spare you the details._ The _your son is dead._

Eleonore is hovering. Alexandrine’s sense has deserted her; she thrusts the letter into the other woman’s hands. Eleonore glances down at it, then glances back up, mute. Sits gently on the edge of the bed, reaches for Alexandrine’s hands. They’re shaking, Alexandrine realises, distractedly, like she’s caught in a gale. “I’m so sorry, Madame,” Eleonore says.

Alexandrine swallows, painfully. “Please go and find my daughters, and my niece. Then inform the household. We will be going into mourning with immediate effect. I shall need my black dress.”

“Yes, Madame.” Eleonore gives her another look, measuring and worried all in one, then gets up to do Alexandrine’s bidding. Alexandrine looks back down at the paper, thinks about the wild golden-haired boy who had always been happier running around his father’s ships than sitting to his lessons, the silent, serious young man who had come home after his father’s death, the fierce, self-possessed radical whose brief visits home from university had been to arguments and icy cold disdain. He’s dead, pursuing some kind of rebellion against king and country. God, what a thing to do, she thinks, hollow. How could he have done this to them? How?

There is a rap at the door, and Victoire and Antoinette let themselves in, still in their nightdresses and wraps, the sunlight glowing through their hair. Angels, Alexandrine thinks. My daughters, just like angels. After a moment, Aspasie follows, her dark hair and olive skin a shadow of her cousins’ beauty. The little brat is fully dressed, despite the early hour, and carrying a book bigger than her head; there are leaves in her hair. René was always a bad influence on her.

She tells them the news, her voice surprisingly steady. Victoire and Antoinette stare at her, colour draining from their faces, then Victoire rallies. “Well it wasn’t unexpected, surely. You always said you thought he’d kill himself in pursuit of some hopeless cause, and now well…” she spreads her hands. Antoinette looks more shaken, but nods along. “He never thought of us.”

“No, he didn’t,” Alexandrine murmurs, looks down at her hands. “I’m sorry. The mourning period will interrupt your season, girls. I had hoped to have you married, Victoire.”

“What,” Aspasie interrupts. Her prominent chin juts, and her eyes are wet. Alexandrine notes this without much feeling. “René is _dead,_ and all you can talk about is how inconvenient his timing is? How dare you!”

“Mind your mouth,” Victoire snaps back at her. “Or are you forgetting that it was only on René’s account that we kept you?”

Aspasie’s mouth works. “You heartless _bitch,_ ” she says, like she’s been wanting to say it for a while, low-voiced and bright-eyed. Alexandrine should be furious, she should be shouting back at the little upstart who’s only here because her husband’s sister had a penchant for adopting strays. “René was a better person than _all_ of you put together, and you should be _ashamed_ of yourselves.”

Victoire winds herself up for a lecture, one Alexandrine knows she herself would already be giving if she was in her right mind, but Aspasie has whirled on her heel and disappeared out of the door. They hear her burst into tears the second she is out of sight. Antoinette shifts uncomfortably. “I had better go after her,” she says, and leaves too. Victoire rolls her eyes.

“I shall have Anne-Marie fetch out our black dresses, Maman. Will we be having a funeral?”

“I…” Alexandrine looks back down at the letter. “I am informed that he had a note on him, requesting that he would be buried with his friends. It appears that has already taken place. A memorial, though. He has brought…brought such _shame_ on us, Victoire, I know how hurt you are by it. Believe me, I am too, but appearances matter. We should appear to grieve, even though the…the circumstances of his death are so mortifying.”

Victoire’s expression softens, just a touch, and she comes over to brush a feather-light kiss against Alexandrine’s cheek. “Yes, Maman. Of course. You can always count on me to make sure everything is organised if it gets too much for you.”

“Thank you, my darling. Now go. The news should have made its way downstairs by now, but there is the rest of the family to inform.”

Victoire leaves, and then Alexandrine is alone. She reads over the letter again, and then gets out of bed, walks over to the window and looks out across the estate. Her son is dead. Her _son_ is dead. Why does everything feel so normal?

(It’s only that night that she breaks down and cries. Even then, it’s more for the dream of him than the reality.)

 

**X. Marius**

[1842]

Cosette has been _present,_ all day, in a manner that manages to be comforting but not suffocating. Marius decided not to go into the office, to work from home, accompany Cosette and Jean and Georges and Marguerite out on a walk around the Luxembourg at lunchtime, and then sit and listen to Cosette practise her latest composition for the salon at Victor Hugo’s house tomorrow night. They have a quiet family dinner and put the children to bed, and then retire to the small sitting room overlooking the garden. Marius takes a sip of his wine.

“I can’t believe it’s been ten years,” he says, eventually, and Cosette looks up from the pages of her manuscript book.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Marius pauses. “I think so. Yes. I, well. It just, it feels like such a waste, considering that barely anything has changed, politically. Well, we do our pro bono cases and meetings, and you do your charity work with the other ladies, and we all try to help as much as possible, and my _friends_ gave their lives for nothing. No-one even remembers the June Rebellion, anymore, unless it’s as a cautionary tale. Oh, a radical are you? Well be careful, you don’t want to end up like those fools in ‘32.”

“People are callous and ignorant.” Cosette puts her book aside.

“I’m not _hurt_ by it anymore,” Marius hums. “We were a little foolish.”

“Caught-up. It’s not foolish to work for change.”

“Fine. Caught-up. We got caught up, we didn’t think for a second that it wouldn’t work. At least, if anyone thought it, no-one said anything.” He sighs. “I just wonder what would have happened had they all survived. Where would they be, right now? What would they be doing?”

“Well, no-one would be surprised that you married me and had a family,” Cosette says. “And well, perhaps Enjolras and Grantaire would have worked out their differences and become lovers. Enjolras would certainly be a lawyer, trying to aim for the Parlements probably, if not the National Assembly. Jehan would be a published poet, and Feuilly would start a society on Poland.”

“Grantaire would make a name for himself with his art. Combeferre would already be teaching at the university - youngest person to hold a chair in the medical school.” Marius continues. “Courfeyrac would continue to pretend to be an outrageous gentleman of leisure, Bahorel would continue avoiding his responsibilities. Joly and Bossuet would still be with their mistress…I forget her name, now, but Joly was utterly silly over her.”

“You have _no_ leg to stand on when it comes to being silly over a woman,” Cosette laughs, and Marius blushes, but he’s laughing too. “What was it Enjolras said to you that night?”

“Who cares about your lonely soul,” Marius says, and Cosette laughs harder. “It was justified, really, in the circumstances. I must have annoyed him no end.”

“I should have liked to meet them,” she says. “And I like that we can talk about them like this, that you can. So many people never talk about those who have died.”

“If I don’t talk about them, how will I remember?” Marius asks, and she shifts closer, takes his hand, her leg brushing against his. The night presses in through the windows, the fire crackles, deep red and burning gold. Ten years they’ve been gone, and the mark they left on Paris has faded, but it’s alright. Here, Marius thinks, in the reminiscence and the firelight, they will always live on.

 " _turning, turning, turning through the years. minutes into hours and the hours into years. nothing changes, nothing changes, round and round and round about and back where you began. round and round and back where you began."_

***End***

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: @barefoot-pianist, always happy to scream about revolutionaries.


End file.
